I am Jewish and the Nazis murdered many in my mother’s family in Germany. I have attended the encampments at MIT and Northeastern and Tufts and gazed through the locked gates at the Harvard encampment. The protesters are opposing a brutal genocide by Israel against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. These protesters are nonviolent and peaceful and have uttered not one single violent threat to anyone in the many hours I have spent in the encampments.
The notion that some in Cambridge have that Cambridge police stand only for security and public order is false. For example, on April 10, 1969, at the request of then Harvard president Nathan Pusey, Cambridge and state police violently arrested 200 protesters who were occupying University Hall. There was much clubbing and bloodshed.
I write in response to the policy order enacted Monday. The language is unfortunately convoluted and vague when it should be clear. Does Cambridge want to be on the right side or the wrong side of history? Professor Rashid Khalidi of Columbia University recently declared that the protesters will go down on the right side of history, just as the students who protested against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid. And, he further noted, that no one will remember the university administrators who are conducting these violent attacks other than to think of them as supporters of genocide.
I was present at the MIT encampment in the middle to late afternoon Monday. What I observed is 10 or so Cambridge police officers coordinating closely with state police and behaving in a bellicose, threatening manner. The protesters posed no threat to public order. The police presence served only to escalate and provoke.
Who does Cambridge police protect and serve? From what I saw Monday, not the public. Cambridge police were there clearly to do the bidding totally of the corporate entity known as MIT. The police presence created disorder and menace and served as a major violent provocation.
As a Cambridge resident, I demand that the city withdraw its police force from serving as the enforcement thugs of two powerful, private universities. Cambridge government should protect its citizens and not enable multibillion-dollar institutions to violently attack peaceful protesters standing against Israeli and American genocide.
Marty Blatt, Valentine Street, Cambridge
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YMMV but when I walked on by on Monday afternoon most of the cops were chatting with one another and it kind of just felt like your run of the mill Cambridge protest
Better the Cambridge Police than the MIT Police!
A key point of confusion is that MIT can refer to several entirely different entities, with diametrically opposed interests:
– MIT as the MIT Corporation. This is a group of VCs, bankers, CEOs, etc. with little connection to what anyone thinks of as MIT. Legally, they are MIT. The Chair is Mark Gorenberg, who is a VC in San Francisco, with no real connection to the Institute in the past half-century.
– MIT as the MIT Administration. As the MIT endowment has bloated, this has grown bloated as well, with massive headcount at the bottom, and a cesspool of authoritarianism and corruption at the top.
– MIT as the MIT Community. This is what most people think of as MIT — the 5,000 undergrad and 5,000 grad students, which is where the research and creativity comes from.
Somewhere between the community and the administration sit the faculty. A lot of the discussion conflates these. From my perspective, helping MIT means helping the MIT community and the MIT mission, and not the MIT Corporation, which rarely represents those interests.
The MIT police are paid for by the MIT Corporation to serve two purposes:
1. Set up a two-tiered legal system:
Tier 1: Kids who can afford MIT’s $60k tuition (or qualify for a full ride) and meet MIT’s admissions requirements
Tier 2: Everyone else
2. Enforce MIT corporate policy
I’m not sure either of those support the broader public interest, and there is a very clear conflict-of-interest to having them bring the full violent, force of the law in a dispute to which the MIT Corporation is a party.
Police presence who are milling around, preventing crime make all the sense in the world to me. Thugs coming in at 4am in riot gear, beating up peaceful protestors make no sense to me. Of the two evils, the Cambridge police will be far more neutral and objective than ones paid for by corporate overlords.
I think Cambridge Police, acting alone, would have been much less likely to engage in the sort of violence we saw last night than the MIT Police. If they did, their motives would be much less suspect since there would be no conflict-of-interest baked in, and we would have our standard (if limited) democratic oversight mechanisms in place — city council, public records requests, etc. — all of which are absent for a private police force.
Looks like Cambridge Police were actively involved, e.g. pretty sure that a CPD badge on these cops: https://thetech.com/photos/10502
Definitely feel a lot safer now that the police have arrested people for the crime of saying genocide is bad.
Itamar:
The process here, as described by a mailing from MIT President was: “At my direction, very early this morning, the encampment on Kresge lawn was cleared.”
Cambridge and State police were mobilized by mutual aid agreements, but the police power was placed squarely in the hands of two private individuals: MIT President Dr. Kornbluth and MIT Chairman Mr. Gorenberg.
The MIT police serve at their pleasure.
If this process were handled by Cambridge police, when called, the police would have had many options:
– Do nothing
– Ask people to leave
– Force people to leave, without making arrests
– Arrest but not charge people
– Arrest and charge people
They could have picked whichever they believe was most appropriate. This did not happen. In this case, the choice was taken out of the hands of law enforcement. I do not understand why Dr. Kornbluth and Mr. Gorenberg have the power to mobilize an army of police officers to engage in violence on their behalf.
I understand all of the problems with police oversight, but it’s a lot better than the alternative.
The precedent set here is scary.
Shame on the administration, CPD, and other local and state police.
Time to look into ending their non-profit status and instead marking them as what they are, a for-profit entity.
I presume a BILL is being sent to them (MIT) for the use of our police in this manner? If not they should be billed for it and the payment of such (and any overtime etc) as the same rate as a Private Construction Site Detail officer would be paid.
That the city is mandated to follow the orders of a private police force is genuinely insane.